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ACHIEVEMENT: BRITANNIA AWARDS
Mendes Shakes, Stirs Franchise
Helmer enlivens, deepens Ian
Fleming’s treasured series By Peter Debruge
HERE’S A THEORY: If not for
Sam Mendes, Universal
never would’ve entrusted an
indie greenhorn like Colin
Trevorrow to direct “Jurassic
World,” nor would George Lucas have
dreamed of handing the reins of his “Star
Wars” franchise to the likes of Rian Johnson
(“Brick”).
While hardly your typical indie director
by origin, British-born Mendes, who is
receiving the John Schlesinger Britannia
Award for Excellence in Directing, was a
bold choice to tackle “Skyfall,” the 23rd
film in the Eon-produced James Bond
franchise — and one of the few to be overseen
by a helmer selected on the strength
of his dramatic directing chops — resulting
in $1.1 billion worldwide box office,
the Bond series’ highest-grossing film.
The tendency with such franchise
assignments — from Bond to “Star Wars”
to the “Jurassic Park” series — has long
been to pick journeymen helmers, favoring
those lacking an authorial imprimatur
who excel at the technical side of things:
specifically, experience working with
huge crews, while juggling both action
and effects — guys like Roger Spottiswoode
(who’d edited two Sam Peckinpah
pics) and John Glen (promoted from second-unit
duty).
Mendes is hardly the first director
to be given such an opportunity. (Chris
Nolan demonstrated such an aptitude
on “Batman Begins,” even if that film’s
fight sequences reveal the limits of his
action-blocking abilities.) But to borrow a
Bond-ism: Nobody does it better.
Beginning in theater, where Mendes
developed his skills directing actors
(reimagining such classics as “Cabaret”
and “The Glass Menagerie”) and a necessary
appreciation for the written word
(onstage, the “book” serves as both blueprint
and bible, and no one dreams
of launching a production without a
rock-solid script in place first). With such
legit experience under his belt, he made
the switch to the big screen with 1999’s
“American Beauty,” a debut that demonstrated
his mastery of both disciplines,
pairing an Oscar-recognized cast with a
killer screenplay by Alan Ball.
Debuting at the Toronto film festival
before going on to win five Academy
Awards, “American Beauty” effectively
crowned a decade every bit as important
to the evolution of Hollywood as the
hallowed 1970s — that post-“Easy Riders”
stretch in which studios took wild
gambles on a new generation of relatively
unproven directors. The ’90s showed
a similar panic among the majors, as
blockbuster formulas stumbled and execs
turned to an emerging class of fest-blessed
indie darlings to reinvigorate their
mainstream fare.
It was thus, following the emergence
of such auteurs as Kevin Smith, the Coen
brothers and the two Andersons (anything-but-brothers
P.T. and Wes), that
someone in Mendes’ position found it
possible to leverage a suburban midlife-crisis
drama such as “American Beauty”
into such ambitious projects as Jake
Gyllenhaal starrer “Jarhead” and the luxuriantly
dark graphic-novel adaptation
“Road to Perdition.”
Logistically speaking, those two movies
may have hinted at Mendes’ potential
to handle something as ambitious
BRILLIANT
BRIT Sam
Mendes, seen
here on the set
of “Spectre,”
will receive
BAFTA/
LA’s John
Schlesinger
award.
Mendes
developed
his skills
in theater
directing
actors and
reimagining
classics.”
as a 007 mega-blockbuster, and yet the
helmer next veered the other way, delivering
two intimate couple-oriented dramas,
“Revolutionary Road” and “Away We
Go.” No question “Skyfall” was a leap from
“Away We Go,” albeit one Mendes was
more than equipped to handle, combining
the best-ever Bond script with dramatic
opportunities the series had never before
afforded either Craig (who got to explore
Bond’s emotionally damaged backstory)
or onscreen boss Judi Dench, with meaty
roles for Javier Bardem and Albert Finney
as well. Meanwhile, when it came to
action, Mendes knew where to trust his
team, leaving on second-unit and action
collaborators to elevate the stakes he was
establishing on the character side.
“Spectre,” which will be released Nov.
6 in the U.S., should prove an interesting
test, considering that last December’s
Sony hack coincided with the start of production.
When the film’s script leaked,
the production was forced to adjust late
in the game. But like his nimble onscreen
hero, Mendes thinks fast on his feet,
and the world will soon see how well he
adapted to such a terrorist threat.
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